Noh to now: traditions and counter-traditions in Japanese performance

Lecture series

Against the backdrop of the exhibition Theatre of dreams, theatre of play: nō and kyōgen in Japan, this series looks at a selection of genres from Japan’s rich spectrum of performing arts.

The lectures reach across centuries — from nō (noh), as a legacy of the middle ages, through to the contemporary phenomenon of Hatsune Miku – to explore both canonised and marginal artforms, and the histories, tensions and paradoxes that have shaped them.

As a whole, the series unpacks Japanese approaches to expression, ultimately offering us new ways of understanding what performance is… or can be.